Randolph said, “We will all go and all speak.” Cabs were sent for, and the one I drove in was a few minutes later than his. When I arrived at the House he was already speaking.’ Sometimes their fiercest opponents, Sir William Harcourt or Sir Charles Dilke, shared their board; though not, it is presumed, their secrets. Nay, Mr. Chamberlain himself was invited, though this greatly shocked the Duke of Marlborough, who did not understand how his son could cultivate social relations with a person of such pernicious opinions, and was quite sure House of Commons traditions must have greatly changed since he succeeded. One member of the Government, mentioning to the Liberal Whips that he was dining with the Fourth Party, was told that ‘so long as he kept those four fellows away he could stay any length of time he liked.’ Lord Randolph’s house, in St. James’s Place, was _next door_ to Sir Stafford Northcote’s; but luckily the walls were thick; and here we see the Fourth Party gathered in festive council round the dining-room table, amid the haze of countless cigarettes. Wolff has discovered some new intrigue among the ‘Goats’ or the Radicals or the Parnellites. Gorst has a plan for meeting it. Their leader examines it all with a gay and brilliant vivacity which made his companionship precious to those to whom it was frankly given; and in the background, rather silent, ready enough with chaff and counsel, but difficult to rouse to action, sits Arthur Balfour, dreamily revolving longer calculations of his own. Here, then, for the present we may leave them and their leader, happy in the enjoyment of active and pugnacious irresponsibility, tasting the first pleasures of success and fame and displacing with the haughty assertions of youthful ardour the tame acceptances of age. It is time to turn to those grave events which marched in crowded and uninterrupted procession from almost every quarter of the Queen’s dominions, to the embarrassment and perplexity of her Ministers. CHAPTER IV IRELAND UNDER STORM ‘Your oppression taught them to hate--your concessions to brave you; you exhibited to them how scanty was the stream of your bounty, and how full the tribute of your fear.’--LORD JOHN RUSSELL (_Speech_, Feb. 7, 1837).